We woke the next morning to the sound of the cloud forest raining on our tent. Not raining as such, but more sort of steadily dripping large quanitites of water on us. This wasn´t great news for teh clothes we´re left out to, somewhat optimistically, dry on a tree outside, or the tent, which we had to pack soaking wet, or any of the clothes we were wearing teh day before, or our still significantly damp boots which we´d given up on drying after mine nearly caught fire the night before. Still, we packed up, dressed ourselves in our wet clothes, managed to produce a hot cup of coffee (with what seemed like the millionth match) and continued heading upstream.
It felt like we spent most of the morning crossing backwards and forwards across the river, which also felt like it was getting narrower and, in places, definitely deeper. At one point Rick got very Dutch and decided to build a dam out of rocks so that we could cross without getting wet, which was remarkably effective! We had agreed to go on until lunchtime before deciding whether to continue for the afternoon or head back to our original camp. We were still hoping that we might find the elusive trail number 5 at some point and rejoin the orgnaised paths. By lunchtime however there was no sign of trail 5 and any road noises we had heard earlier had long since disappeared. It was just us, the birds, and the constantly dripping cloud forest. We decided the best course of action would be for me to prepare lunch while Rick went off scouting to try to work out where we were. In the end we worked out we must have missed the track and were heading due north, into an entirely unmapped section of the park and nowhere near any sort of road or path. Based on the fact that we were cold, wet and only had enough food for two more days, we figured it was probably a good idea to turn around at this point. , and that if we were fairly prompt about it we might even make it back to the official campsite by nightfall.
We passed our previous campsite a short while later and as we had definitely heard cars the night before we started watching carefully for signs of a trail and sure enough, a short while later, we found one. We figured we might as well see some of the official part of the park and embarked on the incredibly steep track 5, a decision I regretted about halfway up as it really was very steep! We then ended up on the mountain bike track which was reasonably unexciting until it suddenly disappeared into an unexpected rocky drop. Fine if you´re on foot, somewhat alarming if you´re on a bike! Still it was quite a nice walk and it took us to another track which went past a lovely lake and trees full of monkeys (still not my favourite creatures after Vietnam...). We eventually made it back to the official campsite though where we, once again, bumped into the Italian boy- who hadn´t managed to spot a panther either but was fairly confident he had at least heard one as well- set up our tent and crawled into bed muddy and exhausted.
